The Crispy Garden

Thanks to all of you who made it through yesterdays TL;DR post! I won't do that to you again, I promise. I just had to write all of that down to help me process the day. I seriously think I have a little PTSD from the camera theft, but it is easing.

Here's what the garden looks like upon our return. Warren, our house-sitter, did a good job keeping most everything alive, but as you can see the grass is getting brown and many of the plants are sagging. It's not even hot at the moment, though it apparently was during our absence. Now it's just bone-dry. We have watering restrictions so all our maintenance for the foreseeable future will have to be done with watering cans.

It appears we did lose one of the ferns I planted earlier in the spring, and one of my sunflowers was somehow broken off at the base. Oh well.

The indoor plants are mostly OK, but I suspect Warren watered a bit too lightly because a few are in a sad state -- mainly the maidenhair ferns, which like dampness. Or maybe it got too hot in the house. In any case, they should bounce back.

On the plus side, our orange dahlia is blooming...

...and we have some new zinnias coming out...

...and this geranium, which I bought from Waitrose in the spring because it was wilted and looked so pathetic, is now doing great and has given us flowers. I didn't know what color they'd be but I like this light orangey-pink.

I spent yesterday doing laundry, and I'm only about halfway through the task. It's amazing how many clothes two people can go through during a two-week trip, and we had a bag of laundry washed on the ship! Ninety-plus degree weather didn't help. We had to change twice a day.

Speaking of laundry, here's a new t-shirt that Dave bought me, in honor of our recent unwanted garden guests:

I thought it was hilarious. We haven't seen Ratthew since our return. I hope we've successfully driven him (and all his family) away by getting rid of the bird feeders.

Dave asked yesterday if he should start looking at dogs to adopt. I said yes, though my head is still spinning from the trip. Getting a dog will help break me out of my PTSD, forcing me to look forward rather than back. Besides, it's going to take some time to find one we like, get approved by the animal rescue group, and start the fostering process. Dave has to do the initial screening because I'll want to adopt every single animal. As I told him, I'd have happily taken any (or all!) of those dogs we saw at the Villa Borghese on Tuesday (photo in yesterday's post).

Anyway, time to get that ball rolling. It's been just over a year since Olga died.

At the risk of making you all crazy, I will say one more thing about the camera. I think what hit me so hard about this experience wasn't just the loss of the object, but the scary feeling that my brain just isn't working as well as it used to. It freaks me out that I have no clear, specific memory of carrying that camera into the restaurant or where I put it when we sat down. Did I put it on my left or my right? Why didn't I keep the strap over my leg as I always do? Why didn't I set my hat on top of the bag, as I always do? Did I even really have it with me? Could it have been taken from our hotel room, or did I leave it in the lobby during our chaotic check-in? I cannot definitively answer any of these questions, which makes me feel diminished and maybe even a little loony.

I did file a claim with our travel insurance company, so we'll see where that goes.